The walls of EOS Surf & Outdoor Lifestyle Shop are lined with T-shirts depicting waves and surfing and boxes of skate shoes and sandals. The back of the shop displays surfboards and skateboards. And a TV behind the checkout counter plays videos of surfers riding the waves.
The store has all the trappings of a surf shop in California or Hawaii. But it caters to the surfers who catch waves on Lake Michigan from Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Sheboygan has had a rich surf culture for more than half a century, and local tourism leaders eventually branded it “Malibu of the Midwest,” claiming the title of freshwater surfing capital of the world.
“It’s not what you think of [when you think of Wisconsin] and it really drew people,” said co-owner Andrew Jakus. “Now, you go down to Chicago and you ride the ‘L’ train, there’s going to be people surfing Sheboygan all over the banners.”
People have been surfing on Lake Michigan since the early 1950s, and Sheboygan surfers began forming surf clubs by the ’60s.
But Sheboygan isn’t the only place surfers can catch waves hundreds of miles from the East or West coasts. Great Lakes surfing takes place in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan, while river surfing is becoming popular in Iowa. There’s also river surfing at whitewater parks in Oklahoma and Nebraska, and a waterpark in the heart of Texas offers man-made waves that mimic ocean swell.
Iowa river surfing
Hannah Ray J grew up on a family farm near Manchester, Iowa — not exactly a hotbed of surfing — at least not then.
She and her brother enjoyed kayaking and paddling on rivers and flatwater across northeast Iowa, and later, Ray J got interested in whitewater kayaking.
Then she saw someone surfing on a stand-up paddle board in Cedar Falls.
She remembers thinking, “Whoa, what is that? I want to do that.” The surfer ended up giving Ray J a lesson and mentored her. She eventually graduated to riversurfing on a surfboard, and now one of her passions is surfing the nation’s rivers.
“The best way that I can describe it is [it’s] the closest thing to flying without leaving the ground,” Ray J said. “It's magical standing on a board and having that water just move underneath you.”
She’s surfed in oceans and Great Lakes, but she says river surfing is her favorite, because she spends more time surfing than swimming.
“I've been told this from other ocean surfers, that a good ride is 10 seconds, and I think it's similar in lake surfing,” Ray J said. “I can ride on my local river wave for 10 minutes at a time if I want to.”
River surfing is a phenomenon that took hold in Iowa within the last 15 years.
Ty Graham, a river specialist at Riverwise Engineering, a company specializing in river recreation and restoration projects, spent much of the early 2000s lobbying local leaders in Iowa to convert old dams along rivers into whitewater parks. Charles City was the first that saw potential in the idea. The whitewater park in that community opened in 2011.
“Once we got Charles City up and running, people really started to catch on and go, ‘Oh, well, I get that. That's pretty cool,’” Graham said.
Similar parks have opened in other Iowa towns, including Manchester and Elkader. Cedar Falls has also added a river park for surfing, kayaking and other watersports, near the city’s downtown district. And developers are also eyeing Waterloo for another whitewater park. Graham said the Waterloo project could be one of the largest whitewater parks in the country if it comes to fruition.
Man-made waves in Texas
Finding the perfect wave is easy at the Waco Surf waterpark in central Texas.
The wave lagoon is essentially a large wave pool that uses technology to generate just the right swell for surfing, said Mike Schwaab, partner and general manager at Waco Surf.
“I am beyond fortunate, as all surfers are, that we live in the timeline where human beings have figured out how to replicate proper surfing waves,” Schwaab said.
He moved to Texas and purchased the park in 2021 with a business partner and rebranded it as Waco Surf.
Schwaab said the lagoon’s pneumatic wave system allows the park to control the wave height, the wave speed and the distance between waves. That helps the park offer sessions for beginners, intermediate surfers and experienced wave riders.
Texas is a state that borders the Gulf Coast, which has helped the Lone Star State generate its own surf culture, Schwaab said. The Texas Gulf Surf Association hosts its contests on the gulf, but it hosts their finals at Waco Surf.
Schwaab said the waves in the Gulf can be inconsistent and surfers have to wait and see if “Mother Nature is going to play ball.”
“When you've got a place like Waco Surf and you're trying to plan a surf trip with the family or friends, you know that you're going to score beautiful, perfect, consistent waves, because we've taken everything out of that equation,” Schwaab said. “We just go and hit a button and you're gonna get perfect waves.”
A tourism boost
Surfing also helps contribute to local economies by giving tourists and residents something fun to do in the water, enthusiasts say.
In Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, the economic impact of tourism hit $477 million in 2024. And Sheboygan isn’t alone. In central Texas, Schwaab said the Waco Surf park sees “tens of thousands” of visitors each year and has been featured in “Visit Texas” advertising in other states.
Iowa has also seen economic and tourism benefits related to its watersports offerings, like river surfing, Graham said. The Whitewater park in Charles City has an estimated annual economic impact of $746,000, according to a presentation by the city.
Whitewater parks also help make Midwestern communities more of a tourist destination for watersport enthusiasts, Graham said.
While the market sizes of whitewater parks vary considerably, they receive an average of nearly 15,000 visits per year for annual spending that exceeds $1 million, according to a 2021 study by the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Beyond the economics, Graham said removing old dams and building whitewater parks also helps more fish to congregate and increases the diversity of fish in the area.
“This hits every check mark for me. This is helping to rebalance or rewild the ecology,” he said. “It's fun for people to come down, and sit on the rocks and check things out. And it's a viable economic resource and recreational amenity.”
Great Lakes surfing culture
Surfing genuinely is a year-round sport in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
While oceans have tides and a wider surface area for swell to generate, Great Lakes surfing relies solely on wind-generated waves. That means some of the best months for surfing in Sheboygan are actually in the middle of winter because there are stronger winds generating bigger waves.
Surfers wear thicker, hooded wetsuits to stay warm in the frigid water. Jakus said he believes it’s absolutely worth braving the cold.
“We’re out there surfing in the blizzards, and in the snowstorms and everything else,” he said. “This last year, the longest I went without being in Lake Michigan was just shy of two weeks.”
He and his wife, Hannah, took over as owners of the EOS Surf & Outdoor Lifestyle Shop a few years ago. They host youth skate camps, free community paddle events and house a thrift shop in the store’s basement. Jakus said many of those events have been aimed at helping people connect with each other at a time when “everyone is kind of disconnected.”
“We really believe that is the root cause of a lot of struggles: People are losing the ability to spend time together and connect,” he said. “Activities are cool. They’re fun, but really they’re a catalyst for getting people together.”
Across Lake Michigan, Joe Bidawid is working to do much the same on the eastern shore.
A lifelong watersports enthusiast, Bidawid said his family inspired him to begin working to bring a surf festival to western Michigan. His wife, Tammy, is an experienced surfer and their two sons, ages 9 and 12, are also active surfers.
"We're a true surfing family, and we wanted to give back to the community,” he said. “We wanted to put on a fun day to give back, teach kids how to surf [and] cement some of the history. Most people that surf on the Great Lakes, they're first generation surfers like myself.”
Since 2017, the Great Lakes Surf Festival in Muskegon, Michigan, has drawn surfers from across the Midwest and as far away as Mexico. The one-day celebration features live music, art, yoga and surf lessons for beginners. It’s grown into one of the largest surf festivals in the world, according to Bidawid.
“It was the one day where people put everything aside and they [could] come together and they share the camaraderie,” he said. “To me, the togetherness and the camaraderie is an incredible feeling.”
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.